Targeted Relief: Geography of Emergency Rental Assistance Funds

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress established the Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program, which provided nearly 45 billion to prevent evictions and increase housing stability. Using administrative data on ERA transactions, we find that ERA sent more funds per renting household to census tracts with higher prepandemic eviction filing rates, higher rent-to-income ratios, higher poverty rates, higher shares of Black renting householders, higher shares of renting households with children, and higher shares of renting single mothers. Our results suggest that ERA was largely successful in reaching communities that were most likely to have the highest risk of eviction.